Cecily McMillan Sentenced to 90 Days in Prison as Maddening Case Comes to an End

Occupy Wall Street protester Cecily McMillan was sentenced today to 90 days of prison time and five years probation. The sentence comes after a guilty verdict two weeks ago, in a case that has galvanized everyone from Occupy members to Russian activists Pussy Riot.

McMillan was charged with second-degree felony assault of a police officer, after an incident that transpired during a police raid on the Occupy Wall Street community in Lower Manhattan’s Zucotti Park. The police and district attorney’s office claim she elbowed an officer, Grantley Bovell. McMillan, her defense team, and her many supporters, claim she involuntary struck the officer with her elbow after he violently grabbed her breast from behind.

Much has already been written about the case, and about presiding Judge Ronald Zweibel’s handling—and excluding—of evidence that would have almost undoubtedly weakened the prosecution’s version of events. There were the bruises on McMillan’s chest, which the prosecution argued were self-inflicted. There exists audio of McMillan’s fellow protesters imploring the N.Y.P.D. to call an ambulance for McMillan, while she was seizing on the ground as police officers casually looked on, but video played in court was unaccompanied by the sounds of that day in March 2012. There was, of course, plenty of video footage that didn’t make it into Judge Zweibel’s courtroom, and, thus, to the jury. Bovell’s history of alleged violence and misconduct was also excluded from the trial. (A fuller accounting of Zweibel’s “editing” of the case is available from The Nation’s Kathryn Funkhouser.)

Some jurors who convicted McMillan expressed regret once they realized that she could be sentenced to up to seven years in prison. “Most just wanted her to do probation, maybe some community service,” a juror told The Guardian. “But now what I’m hearing is seven years in jail? That’s ludicrous. Even a year in jail is ridiculous.”

In court again on Monday, McMillan rejected the court’s verdict and asserted her innocence. “Whether personal or political, violence is not permitted,” she told the judge. “This being a law that I live by, I can say with certainty that I am innocent of the crime I have been convicted of. I cannot confess to a crime that I did not commit. I cannot throw away my dignity in return for my freedom.”

Judge Zweibel was likely unimpressed. “A civilized society must not allow an assault to be permitted under the guise of civil disobedience,” he said. During the trial, Assistant District Attorney Erin Choi characterized McMillan’s version of the events as “so utterly ridiculous and unbelievable that she might as well have said that aliens came down that night and assaulted her.”

McMillan herself has often noted that, as a white woman with access to legal aid and thousands of supporters who made sure her case was well covered by the media, she’s far more privileged than most of her fellow inmates on Rikers Island. That Judge Zweibel did not subject her to the maximum allowable sentence, then, is hardly justice for her. Nor is it of any comfort in a broader sense: imagining how a less-privileged suspect might have fared in an identical case—and observing the reality of how less-privileged suspects have been generally treated by the criminal-justice system for years—is indeed a grim exercise.

Cecily McMillan just got 90 days in prison and 5 years probation. Cecily told us in prison that we'll see her soon and do things together.